sharing my passion for fly fishing & and the home of Trout Team 6

Trout

It occurred to me that I have never mentioned CFS before. CFS stands for cubic feet per second. It is a very simple thing, but CFS is very important aspect of my fishing preparation.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS), https://www.usgs.gov, has put flow meters in many of the main rivers and tributaries within American watersheds. I personally use check these almost every week for my local waters to get a good feel for how healthy the streams look. Add in my prior experiences, and I can estimate whether or not a particular day will be easy or hard to fish.

This past week, we had so much rain, I thought my local waters would be unfishable. Driving an hour, only to find out a river is blown out, is not my idea of fun. So I went to the website to check the CFS, and here is what I found:

Notice the flow peaked on 10th, and then had another peak on the 11th. This was due to the rain storms we had. Fortunately for me, the river recovered very quickly, and by the 13th, it was ready to be fished again. Some of the best fishing I have experience has been during the downward progression about 10-20 CFS above average,

Without this tool, I would have decided not to fish this weekend. Even though it is slightly above average, this looks very fishable to me, but I will let you know how it goes.

If you are not using the USGS water flow readings, maybe it’s time to start. You can easily enter a google search with your river name and the words USGS and CFS. And if you really want to improve your “fly fishing IQ”, keep track of which water levels produce the most amounts of fish at certain times of the year and maybe you will be able to duplicate your successful days.

Every year from starting in late July through the end of August, I head out to Wisconsin’s Rush River to fly fish during the Trico hatch. This amazing hatch can be brilliant when you catch it right. Thousands of small insects (smaller than 1/2 a finger nail) flit about in the air, mating and then becoming part of the great circle of life.

Eager trout start rising everywhere like water boiling. It is quite a scene to witness. However, fun and frustration are two adjectives that quickly blur together while fishing. Due to the tremendous amount of available food on the top water, my fly offering is more likely to be taken randomly than due to my own skill level.

With that in mind, over the years I’ve developed some techniques that seem to work well for me:

Stay low and quiet. This is true for all fly fishing, but even more so for this hatch.

Where to begin? I’ve had so many good fishing trips since my last posting, it’s hard to break it all down. Well, we’ll start with the last Steelhead trip of the year. Each year, my buddies and I venture into the wilderness of Brule, Wisconsin to fish for the magnificent Oncorhynchus mykiss. A steelhead is essentially an anadromous rainbow trout. That’s biologist-speak for a fish that migrates up a river for spawning from a lake, ocean or other large body. Steelhead are known for their challenging fight and acrobatics. They generally drive fly anglers nuts because of how hard they are to catch on an artificial fly. For a fly fishing fanatic, there is no greater challenge than landing a fresh chrome steelhead.

With the usual suspects (Adam, John D. and John M.) visiting me to take a chance at fly fishing glory, we headed to our usual steelhead hunting grounds on the Bois Brule River in Wisconsin. This year had been a particularly good year already for us steelheading, as shown in this picture of John D. landing a nice steelhead in the early season (he landed another large one later that day as well).

The real hero of this story though is my brother Adam, who broke his 5 year long skunk of not catching anything on the Brule River, and brought more fish to hand than I can count. This year was unique because we caught some browns and brook trout in addition to the skip jacks and chromes. The highlight was when my brother had his first “real steelhead” tighten his line. This is the type of fish that is at least 20 inches and pulls out your line so fast, you barely have time to check if you remembered to set your drag. Unfortunately, it outsmarted him before landing it, but now he knows what we mean when we say we’ve got “steelhead fever”. As for the rest of us, we landed plenty of large brooks, browns, smaller rainbows, and plenty of skip jacks (teenage steelhead), and I had two chrome brutes on that danced in the air, winked at me and loosed my barbless hook. It was disappointing not to land a big one on this trip, but a few dozen fish later, we had plenty of stories to share with each other at the “Crow Bar”, the local watering hole. Now it’s time to start getting ready for the fall run!

This blog post is long over-due. Thanks to my friend and fishing buddy, John Matulis, I finally landed my first rainbow trout (non-steelhead) in Minnesota. And then I proceeded to land a few more! John moved to Rochester, Minnesota from New Hampshire just recently, and he has been exploring the driftless area in effort to give me a reason to drive down to visit him. He’s been scouting out the White Water River, and I finally found some time to join him in our pursuit of tight lines this past fall. Well, the river did not disappoint. After showing me around, John placed me right into his “pot ‘o gold hole” (affectionately now called JPOG) and with the help of a Rainbow Warrior fly, rainbows started crushing my flies. I joked that I found rainbows at the end of the pot o’gold, rather than the other way around. It was a great outing for my first time fishing in southeast Minnesota.

Lance Egan, a competitive fly tier from Utah, has invented many flies that produce staggering amounts of fish. Two of his flies that I fish the most are the Frenchie and the Rainbow Warrior. In particular, the Rainbow Warrior has been a deadly fly for me wherever rainbow trout are around. There’s something about the flash and color scheme that seem to drive these fish bonkers. Here’s my favorite video for how to tie the Rainbow Warrior by Tim Flagler at Tightline Productions:

As an added bonus this week, I’m giving away five size 16 Rainbow Warriors to one person drawn at random (tied with a tungsten bead, and the barbs mashed). Post a comment on my blog and you get entered into the drawing. Post a comment on multiple blog posts and you get two entries (maximum of two entries). In my comments section, leave a comment and your email and I’ll announce the winner one week from today. The winner will have five Rainbow Warriors mailed to the address of his or her choice. Happy commenting!

I’ve now been to the Nantahala River in North Carolina three times. It definitely won’t be the last. This time I had the pleasure of fishing with professional guide, friend and fly fishing enthusiast Clint DePriest. Watching Clint fish reminds me how much I still have left to learn. You can check out his website here: https://www.facebook.com/noondayfishphoto

The weekend marked another trip full of amazing fish, good food and relaxation. Of course, some people wouldn’t call standing in cold water, climbing incredibly steep cliffs, and hiking around a valley relaxing. Plenty of fish were landed, and new scotch was sampled! I was fortunate to be able to shoot enough video to capture the weekend.

One of my favorite parts about fly fishing is exploring the unknown in search of those more challenging fish. What do you like most about fly fishing? Post it in the comments section below.

When I moved to Minnesota, I started fishing the Kinnickinnic River in River Falls, Wisconsin (the Kinni, as the locals call her). This is a typical Midwest small to medium stream in the heart of the northern driftless area with beautiful, naturally reproducing brown and brook trout. It wasn’t until after a couple years of exploring the Kinni that I realized there was another gem about 15-30 minutes further east called the Rush River. From Baldwin all the way through Martel and Ellsworth, the Rush River winds through beautiful farmland with ample natural trout and seasonal hatches. In particular, the Trico hatch, BWOs and Sulfurs are very healthy hatches on this river at various times. Both the Kinni and the Rush are subject to large changes in water flow following rain storms and showers. This brings me to the point of this post.

A lot of fishermen shy away after a rain storm, but I’ve found that sometimes I can have a wonderful day on the river after a storm with a little strategy and the right flies. After the most recent Minnesota and Wisconsin deluge, I decided it was time to put thoughts into action. The river was running higher than usual, and was fairly ruddy, but it was not dangerous to wade (I hear my dad in my mind saying “safety first Michael!”). At the first hole I went too, I struck out big time, including losing my whole rig within five casts. Not the epic night I was hoping for. However, after adjusting my rig a little, I started catching fish after fish as I went upstream from hole to hole, with virtually no one else on the river (ostensibly scared off by the recent storm). After all, the fish do have to eat, regardless of the weather. I was already into double digits for the night, and then the fishing got relatively quiet. The biggest trout I had released so far was 10 inches (with a range of fish caught from 4 inches to 10 inches, both brookies and browns). I had about a quarter mile walk back to the car, so I figured I would tie on a Stimulator and hit the same pools and riffles on the way back. On my way back, I noticed a section of river I had previously ignored because it was difficult to get too, but the storm had padded down all the grass and made access much easier. No sooner had I made a few casts then I was doing my best to pull in a nice 15 inch brown, which is more of a rarity on the Rush. This was a fun fish to land on my newly minted Helios-2 (4-Weight) with CFO reel; this was really the first fish to challenge this rod. A lot of people shy away from Orvis for a variety of reasons, but Orvis makes fantastic gear, is committed to environmental conservation and their customer service is superb in my experience. I have products from Orvis that are over 20 years old, so I am a loyal customer. I released this brown, as I do all my fish, counted my blessings and continued my walk back to the car, grinning from ear to ear about the last fish of the night.

Caught this beauty on the Rush River before dark after a stormy couple days.

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